UN Security Council Not Ready for Action in Bashir Case

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council, which can suspend International Criminal Court proceedings, has no plan to meet if the court indicts Sudan’s leader over killings in Darfur, Libya’s envoy said on Tuesday, in a sign the body is unlikely to halt his case.

ICC judges in The Hague are due to announce on Wednesday whether they will issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused by the court’s chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of ordering a campaign of genocide in Darfur.

“We will not call an immediate meeting of the council,” Libyan Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi, the council’s rotating president for the month of March, told reporters.

“However we will continue consultations with the Arab (League) members, and whenever the need arises we will hold a (council) meeting on that,” he said.

U.N. officials and diplomats say ICC judges have decided to indict Bashir. U.N. officials say as many as 300,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict since 2003, while Khartoum says only 10,000 have died.